July 15, 2025 Power Partners USA Meeting
AI Edited July 15th PPUSA Meeting
[00:00:00]
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Thank you. Okay, good. So let's start out with, our members speak, since we have a guest, let me just start with, Jose Valdez from, SoCal Junk Brothers.
You, and is it you and your brother that have a business you started? Yes, sir. It's me and my brother. Okay. Why don't you introduce you yourself and what you guys are doing.
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: Yes, sir. So I have a little, speech that I, that I have right here. So I'm Jose Valdez. I'm the president and co-founder of SoCal Junk Bros.
Removal, LLC. We're based out of Long Beach, California, and it's, me and my little brother. We decided to build this business to bring professional, reliable, reliable touch to junk and demolition debris across Southern California. We specialize in clean outs, for property managers, contractors, real estate professionals.
We handle everything from evictions and remodel debris to move out and post demo scrap. Our crew is fast and we're bilingual, so that that helps us out with a lot of the Spanish, clients. We like to [00:01:00] show up, on time and profess professional. We're growing our business organically. So we don't have any paid lead services that we go with.
We are reaching out personally to build real relationships, just to be more dependable, easy to work with. We love, we love to be your go-to crew. We wanna explore how we can help, operations run more smoother. So, whether it's a last minute job, urgent clean outs we're, we're always willing to work with, with anyone.
Alan Armijo: Right. Great. Any questions for Jose?
Valerie Condon
Valerie Condon: Jose, do you also do, landscape and debris?
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: Yes.
Valerie Condon
Valerie Condon: Excellent.
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: Yes ma'am. That'll be, so we have, we have a, we have a 10, a eight by 10 by four foot trailer. It, it does have a hydraulic dump, so we'd be in and out quick, really, really fast. We have our own, we, we carry our own tools, so clean [00:02:00] up.
We, we won't leave a mask at your house or anything like that. So that's also
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: like construction sites, is that, is that right? Yes, sir. Okay. And, and private homes you said too, right? Yes, sir. Mm-hmm. Okay. We're, I, I, I'm making, cold calls, on behalf of Power Partners trying to, find new Power Partners.
And, I called Jose. We had a nice conversation. Turns out, we might be doing some help with him on marketing with his business cards and the decals on your truck. Just a quick question. The decal you want, is that gonna be like a one you want to glue on? Like to paste on?
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: Yeah. Like a vinyl, yeah, like a vinyl sticker. Just put it on.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Okay. No, just, just checking. Okay. So,
Jose Valdez: Any other
Alan Armijo: questions for Jose?
Candace Ramirez
Candace Ramirez: No question specifically, but it's crazy how Alan, I just wanna give a little bit of an insight how, Jose came in and he explained what it is that he does, and right away my [00:03:00] brain is working so many different things.
I'm like, oh, he can probably work with Vince because Vince's company does. Mm-hmm. This and that and like, so it's great Vince, so Vince, he's not here today, unfortunately, but he is another power partner. And so it's like the connections that Power Partner makes is like you showing up to these meetings.
It automatically brings, our core people into consideration. 'cause you're telling me what you do. This is the first I've ever heard of your business, your line of work. And I'm like. Oh, wait, let so I think it's really great when you bring, someone new in that has a complete different field or line of work and that, it's easily like, oh, they can work with so and so and things like that.
So I just wanna bring that up. 'cause I think that, you know, that's the first thing that popped in my head.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Right, right. And I've already sent him a couple of, introductions or just at least names, just so he get a feel for how we do work when, I'm using Johnny's AI to make those introductions as well, Candace.
So thank you. That is true. But nothing [00:04:00] actually beats these meetings, frankly, I think. Mm-hmm. The top, way to really connect with people is, through the meetings where I can hear 'em talk and then going into our in person, if you didn't hear before Jack and, kelly, we scheduled it for August 7th, our in-person, member round table for, being able to discuss problems and solutions that we have in our business.
So it's not a networking event, it's not a happy hour. It's, a work session from 10 30 to noon. Tentatively at Keller Williams on second, and PCH and with lunch afterwards, we'll go to a restaurant nearby. So, okay. Well, thank you Jose. Thank you for attending. I'll be available to answer any questions about Power Partners and, let's go on to Deborah or Mijo, IRU Marketing.
Thank you guys for having Yes. Stick around. Stick around. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Deborah, what's the latest with Irus?
Debra Armijo
Debra Armijo: Well, hello. Hi, Jose. Debra. Hi Debra. From Irus Marketing, helping businesses with their visual communication, whether it's. [00:05:00] Online or offline, meaning, you know, print, brochures, tablecloths, you know, hopefully helping work, hopefully look forward to maybe helping Jose with his Oh yeah,
definitely.
Debra Armijo: Yeah, so, and then even like, working with, Johnny with, ai, that's been real interesting. And, and plus what's ironic is, working with a client together, we still have to promote the AI visually. So we're putting information on their website to remind them to use this new tool.
It's just ongoing updating things. Then also we're working with, Arlene with, option One Home Care. We updated, she already has her logo and website and all that, but she's had some outdated information on her brochure, so we updated that. Got it printed. It was funny 'cause our old brochure didn't, it didn't have, it didn't even have her website on it.
So things like that. We put QRS to get to information, but also helping [00:06:00] her, we were at one of her meetings where we were handing it out for her and meeting doctors and nurses and hopefully do more like that. Maybe some expos or conferences with her help help her set up her, her visual, marketing with banners and things like that.
Tablecloth. But yeah. And then finally, well, I don't know. I, it's a never ending updating our Power Partners brochure, so, I think we finally have it done, but we may have to wait again. But what I do, what I do, yeah, we'll have it done by
Alan Armijo: the seventh. We'll have it done by the seventh.
Debra Armijo: Well, we have to have it done by the seventh, but, it.
If somebody, if people join afterwards, we do, I have it really big on the brochure to look for updates, got QR codes to go to the new me, the members listings. So I'm always kind of thinking ahead. 'cause that's, but it's really nice to hand out something tangible. I have to tell you it works.
So, but yeah, if, [00:07:00] you can see our work on, I trusts marketing.biz, you can see their websites or logos or print material, social media on, online, images. So, there you go.
Alan Armijo: Good. Good. Any questions for Debra?
Okay, thank you Debra. Very comprehensive for us. I wanted to go to Jeffrey since we haven't seen you in a while, Jeffrey. How are things at the office? Condos,
Jim Better
Jim Better: you're renting them out.
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: We're actually selling 'em. This is the Costa Mesa project. Alan's referring to 200 East Baker. It was, office condo conversion we started over two years ago.
And it's going well. We've sold two, at full asking. We have one in escrow and, expecting another signed purchase and sale agreement today. So that will sell out about half the building, which puts us in a, a really good position, for the remainder of the project. Good for you. They're, they're coming along fantastically [00:08:00]
Valerie Condon
Valerie Condon: question, who are you, who are you selling to?
What businesses?
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: Professional services. So one was, wealth management. One is a technology group, an attorney. Attorneys are really loving the project just 'cause it's super high end office space. The group we're in escrow with is actually a real estate, development company. Small firm, but they do some pretty good projects just looking for, you know, professional office space.
Valerie Condon: And how, what are the range and sizes of these spaces from?
Jeffrey Hakim: The smallest one is about 2300 square feet and the largest is 12,000 square feet.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Thank you. How many floors is that?
Jeffrey Hakim: Two floors.
Johnny Garcia: And you said that they're conduits, so I'm curious because this is commercial, right?
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: Yes.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: That's, I'm curious about that.
It, does that mean like it's a co-op? 'cause it's not an HOA, I mean
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: there is an association. Yeah. So it's just like you would think of a residential [00:09:00] condo, right? This is just a, commercial real estate office condo. So there 10 units in this two story office building. They all have an individual, a PN, you know, every owner can take title however they choose.
So just, you know, full standard rights of voting, of real estate. But because there is common area, there is an association in place that accounts for, manages the common area, internal and exterior, landscaping, all that good stuff for the property
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia (2): insurance and all that. Does it include any, like utilities or any other,
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: the association?
Yes. There's the, all the units are separately metered for electricity. Everything else is included in the, the association. So basically a buyer will have their mortgage, their property taxes will be the primary expenses, their premises insurance, right, for just insuring everything within the walls and then their electricity.
Hmm.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Someone was [00:10:00] asking me about commercial space and I didn't even know that this was an option.
Jeffrey Hakim: I'm driving right
Jim Better: now.
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: Yeah, it's fairly unique, we're seeing it a little more often. We're seeing it with medical office as well. I'm actually seeing it with some industrial product as well. The, what I like about this project is the majority of the units are two to 5,000 square feet, which in office space, that's the majority of the requirement.
It's probably 80% of the demand in the market, but they don't build buildings that small. You really don't find anything under maybe 5,000, but most likely 10,000. So we're, we're, it's a, I mean it's a drop in the bucket as far as the supply goes, but we're, we're catering to what could be a pretty large, demand.
'cause again, that's the majority, that size range is the majority of the market, but there's just. Not a lot for sale in that size range.
Johnny Garcia: Yeah. When I was, when I was doing a lot of the real estate, I had a couple, a couple of commercial people come up to me and the two biggest concerns were of course, availability.
'cause there was nothing out [00:11:00] there that they need or that fit their needs. Mm-hmm. Or if it did feed their needs, it was too much. And, and buying the land as well, put them over the price limit. So I didn't even know, buying a, a condo, a piece of a property, like this was an option and I'm like, damn, I wish I would've known about this a couple years ago.
Jeffrey Hakim: Yeah, me too.
Johnny Garcia: Yeah.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: So, so, Jeff, Kelly, Haws is, she changed her companies and she's more on the lines of, placements and contacts in the warehousing area, right, Kelly?
Kelly Haws
Kelly Haws: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jeff and I have actually, we've met before.
Alan Armijo: Okay, good. Thank So we already have
Kelly Haws: coffee. Yeah. So we're aligned.
Kelly Haws
Kelly Haws: We are good to go.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Alright. Just, I'm glad you're selling.
Kelly Haws
Kelly Haws: That's awesome to hear, Jeff.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Thank you. Okay. One of those
Johnny Garcia (2): for me, Jeff.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: I plan on making a lot
Johnny Garcia (2): of money soon.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: I love it. I wanna hear, love to see you in one of those things. The last rising tide
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: lifts all ships. Let's do it.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Last thing, Jeff. If you get the opportunity to have a, you know, a Power Partners mixer at your space, let us know.
You know, now that you, [00:12:00] now that you're getting more, set up over there, we'll, we'll bring people to you. My pleasure. We'll bring people to you. Okay. Let's, absolutely. Let's go to Valerie. Valerie, welcome back to Power Partners. Thank you for rejoining. We we're, I know you were a member. We have you a member since 2023, but you were a member well before that.
You had to, took a break and came back and now, you know, but we, we love having you as a great resources, great resource, as well as a friend. And, thank you for the leads that you've been giving us. Those are always nice to, get. What else? Why don't you tell us what's the latest?
Valerie Condon: So, I am a veteran real estate agent.
I've been selling real estate in the, LA County, orange County area for a very long time. Residential, is a majority of my business, but I do some small commercial, small office buildings, various locations. The real estate market is shifting. We talk about that all the time in my industry, but we are seeing the shift [00:13:00] inventory is up 30%.
Price reductions are in the 40% range. Norm is somewhere lower than 30. Interest rates are remaining in the high sixes to seven. We don't see any shift there at all. So it is becoming something we have not seen in decades, maybe a normal market, where, you know, we don't have 10 offers. We don't have property selling 50 or a hundred thousand dollars.
Every list price we see them sell for list price are slightly under. We're seeing more concessions from sellers in terms of paying closing costs or other, concessions for buyers. A shift going on Meanwhile. Property continues to appreciate, you know, LA Orange County. There's nowhere else to build.
And consequently we're gonna see things like, I, I expect we'll see these condo conversions in it. Business condo conversions, existing sites, because there's just nowhere to [00:14:00] build and people keep coming to California. Our economy continues to be extraordinarily robust. So overall, some.
Shifts, but the market remains very, very strong. Please feel free to use me as a resource. As I said, I've been in the business for a long time. If there's nobody in our group in terms of a, a vendor, I have people, real estate attorneys, trust attorneys, any attorney you might divorce attorneys, any attorney you might want.
I can certainly provide a referral as well as contractors, handyman, you name it. They're all vetted. I personally use the vast majority of them. Either they have worked for me or I've seen their work in one of my clients' homes. So please use me as a resource. If I don't have the answer or I can't provide someone, I'll find someone for you.
Alan Armijo: Yeah. And, well, any questions for valor? Because, Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Johnny Garcia: Yeah. So are, are, are you a broker or an agent?
Valerie Condon: I'm an agent. [00:15:00] Why, tell me, why would I wanna be a broker and have that additional liability?
Johnny Garcia: Only reason I ask 'cause I'm a broker and I'm like, you don't want to be one. So, yes. You know why they're
Valerie Condon: called brokers, right, Johnny?
'cause they're broke.
Johnny Garcia: You're absolutely right about the whole liability. Now the only reason I'm asking was because of the platform. I'm gonna show you guys in a minute. I'm like, I'd have to talk to your broker to see. I just think there's a lot of synergy there. And moreover, I wish I would've known you again two years ago before I became a broker and all this stuff.
'cause with your experience, it would've been great to have some sort of mentor rather than stumbling through the chaos that I've gone through in the last few years.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Well, this, this is why we're gonna have this, this member round table is to, get this resource, connections going, you know.
We all want leads. We always, we all want referrals, but we don't miss out on saving money or making money from information that we can get from each other. Let's stay on the real, I'll go Do you want something, Jim?
Jim Better
Jim Better: Yeah, I [00:16:00] wanna, Valerie, it sounds like things have flipped pretty quickly here in the last couple months.
They
Valerie Condon: really have Jimmy. Absolutely. And I wanna
Jim Better: say, I wanna give Jackinsky a a a a heads up here because he predicted this. Yeah. How's going Jack?
Alan Armijo: Well, I, I wanted to go to Jack to keep it on the real estate front and just kind of mention, I don't know if this is a canary in a coal mine, but a friend of mine's a realtor in the Hamptons in New York, and like I see his emails
Johnny Garcia
Alan Armijo: and like, prices are reduced by $200,000.
You know, and I don't know if that's going on here where price reductions in housing is, is a thing yet, but, I just, I, I just thought a surprise to see like that big a drop. But I think it's relative to, you know, when you're talking the Hamptons. But, yeah. Jack, what, what's the latest? Thank you for your emails.
Those are very good information, that you're sending out. And you're on the mute. You're on mute. You're on mute, Jack.[00:17:00]
We can't lip read.
Jack Senske: So, yeah, you're welcome. I, it, it's, it's a weird market. It all started and, and I visit real estate, agents all the time. You know, it's the bulk of my referral business. And so I'm out actually on the street in offices talking to people. And it's funny that everything seemed to have happened right around the,
Alan Armijo: oh, no.
Oh, oh no. Oh, talk about go to commercial. You, you froze up, Jack. Wait,
Jack Senske: wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You felt like that was done on purpose, man. I was like, you had, you had everybody at the edge of their seats. So anyway, I, I, I'm not sure what just happened there, but, I, anyway, so it all kind of happened and, and that, and I, I kind of,
equate this to like a slack tide. It's, it's kind of in between one tide coming in and the other one [00:18:00] going out. And so there's a lot of stagnation. I think, people are waiting. I think, Valerie may agree with this, but I think there's a ton of pent up demand and people are just, we're waiting. They're waiting, they're waiting for some impetus to kind of go forward.
I think, the uncertainty kind of is kind of stall stalling it and that, and that's creating a little bit of a, a lack of demand. And I think probably the biggest impetus that will make things go forward will be some positive move with the interest rates. And, and once we get there, once we get some feeling that it's gonna go and continue to go rather than going and stop and back up again, I, I think that that'll probably change the tide to go back out.
But it'll be. Probably more of a buyer's market. There's gonna be, I think more sellers than buyers. And I think it'll kind of even out. We never are even, it's always one way or the other. It's, unfortunately, it's never predictable one, you know, with, [00:19:00] an even buyer seller market. So, anyway, I'm, I'm just looking forward to our, our demand.
I'm sorry about my printer. It's going nuts. I'm just looking for that point where we tip and, and start going the other way with the interest rates. And I think the real estate market will stabilize then. So it's good. We have inventory. It's good. We have appreciation. I think it's good that we have a lot of buyers that are ready to buy.
I just, we're just looking for the trigger.
Alan Armijo: Right. What do, what do you, you froze when you said, what do you think started it?
Jack Senske: I think it all started basically when the, the whole thing in my mind, it started right when this tariff business started at the beginning of April. Mm-hmm. The stock market went sideways.
People's retirement accounts went down, the buyers got uncertain. Do I really want to jump in? I don't know what's gonna happen. And we kind of got stuck there. I, and from all of my agents that I talked to, stuff is sitting on the market crazy. Stuff is sitting on the market that didn't sit on the market 30 days [00:20:00] before.
So it's really, really weird. As Valerie explained, the shift is just crazy. But, again, it's just a dynamic that I think as fickle as it is, it's just gonna take a little bit of a trigger. Hopefully it's the interest rates that kind of set things back. Moving again, 'cause it's dead.
Johnny Garcia: I'll let Jim go, but I got a statement on that too.
Jim Better: Go ahead, Jim. Okay. Where's Jose? Jose, you can get rid of anything. You can, you can move anything, any way you can get my ex-wife outta my life. Oh, that one we'll do for free. Oh, ouch. That's a
Johnny Garcia: deal. Hey Jim, there's a dark web I can introduce you to hold on a dark web. Jack, to your point. So, I mean, I think most of you know my background is in the mortgage and analytics and whatnot, and I still do small contracts for friends here and there.
And I, one of the research that we were doing was exactly that. Like we're trying to predict what the next, what the fed's gonna do over the next, you [00:21:00] know, two to three, quarters. And, you know, we were signed, we were seeing some, some saw some improvement prior to this election. And we thought, okay, cool.
We thought there was gonna be a boom and rates would come down. But you're right, the terrorists unfortunately. Artificially is keeping inflation high, which is forcing the Fed to keep rates high. We may, we think they may even raise them, if, if the, this administration says they're gonna do what they're gonna do with the tariffs.
But to your point, the craziness of all of this is that you have rates that are high appreciation that's still going up. And if you actually look at the, household debt and the money supply and on, if you guys dunno what Fred is, is the Federal Reserve economic data source.
It's my go-to place to go. They have a thing in there that shows you how much money people have in their savings account as a whole country and as well as debt. All the money people had saved up during COV seems to now being, [00:22:00] seems to be being tapped into now 'cause we're no longer seeing that crazy line up and debt is through the freaking roof.
So the craz, so I don't even know, even if unless interest rates come down, even the people who are working and want to buy that new house, I don't know if they're gonna qualify with their, with, with their, with their DTI, 'cause their debt is so high. Even before I stopped doing mortgages, and I stopped doing mortgages last year, some of my clients were coming in and they were telling me, yeah, I have 150,000 in cash that I saved during COVID.
Why? Because they, they stopped paying their mortgage payment 'cause they weren't gonna be foreclosed on. And they were, their wife was on unemployment, but they were getting COVID really, she was making more money on unemployment than she was in, in, in her job. So they were able to accumulate a lot of cash, but to hold onto that cash, they started using their credit cards for everything.
The credit card payments were so much smaller. So now when they were trying to come back two years later saying, oh, I wanna buy that [00:23:00] house now, which is 20% higher than it was two years or four years ago. I'm like, you don't qualify. They go, what are you talking about? I have 150,000 in cash. And I'm like, yeah, but you've added $40,000 of debt on your credit card with that mortgage payment at these prices.
Your DTI is over 50%. I can't qualify you un unless we go non qm. And even then you don't qualify. So we're trying to figure out what the next. Wave is gonna look like. But I think to Valerie's point, we're gonna start seeing a lot of more concessions. You're gonna need to, I mean, these people are not gonna be able to afford it otherwise.
And values are gonna start coming down. And if the administration does move forward with a lot of these tariff talks, it's possible we're gonna start seeing a recession. And if we see a recession, that could trigger a lot of other things too. So, anyway, that's just my 2 cents that came up and I, I had to throw it in there.
Alan Armijo: Yeah. Let me, welcome and this is, you know, things that we can bring up too and you know, how to deal as members with [00:24:00] recession, possibilities and stuff. We're gonna talk about this. Miguel, welcome. We scheduled our, member. Round table for August 7th from 10 30 to noon. And then we're gonna have lunch afterwards.
It's gonna be at, most likely at Keller Williams right now. So that's, that's the plan. It's an in-person thing. So that's our relationship building opportunity and, problem solution. Meeting, let's go to, uh, Candace. You have a couple of announcements, right? Candace, at least one.
Candace Ramirez: Yes, yes. Um, so just a little bit of a overview, um, here at Take My Tasks, uh, formerly known as Daftco, which is still our parent company.
Um, we provide, um, virtual customized virtual assistance services. Um, basically anything we need from lead generation, appointment setting, calendar management, executive assistants, personal assistants. Um, and the list literally goes on. Bookkeeping, project management, picture video editing, everything. Um, when I say [00:25:00] customize, we basically, um, you know, go off of your business wants and needs.
Um, so there's that. Um, we do try to keep our pricing as low as possible, um, at around 12 to $15 an hour, give or take. Um, and you get qualified candidates, so if you use specific CRMs or specific tools, they would be, um, all the candidates provided to you would be experienced in those tools, uh, to minimize your, um, training time.
And, uh, an announcement, I guess that guy and I can share together is, um, we just partnered yesterday. Um, so we have officially started recruitment for him, uh, today.
Guy Shurki: I'm good. Yeah. I, I, we, we had a call yesterday. Am I on mute or No? You're, you're okay? No, we can hear you. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry again, I'm in the car.
Uh, yeah, we, we had a, a great meeting yesterday. [00:26:00] Thank you very much, Candace. And, um. She looked at which, um, which CRM we going to use. Um, she recommended some. We, you know, I, I took that, uh, one of her recommendations. And then, uh, the good thing is that the person she's going to find us is going to know that CRM and is going to know the marketing platform that we going to use.
So I don't need to waste my days and weeks just trying to teach someone how to use stuff. Uh, I can just, uh, unleash them, you know, on the CRM and the marketing tool and, uh, let them do their work and I can concentrate on other things. That's what I like about it. And the price is excellent. I mean, like $15 an hour, you know, four hours a day.
I mean, that's, that's an excellent price.
Alan Armijo: What's the goal? Which knows what
Guy Shurki: he's doing.
Alan Armijo: What's the goal with your, uh, the virtual basically. [00:27:00]
Guy Shurki: Basically cold calling companies, mining, uh, mining the, the Apollo io and, uh, and finding qualified clients so they can schedule me into a meeting with the clients and then I can just, you know, we can grow the company.
'cause until now, for two decades, more than two decades, I've been growing organically from one client to another, to another. And now we wanna do this one big jump in, in growth. And for that I need someone to be on the phone and to make phone calls. Um, I never tried it before, gonna be the first time, so we'll see how that's worked.
Alan Armijo: So good. So Candace, um, anything else you wanna add or any questions for Candace?
Candace Ramirez: Um, well, I just wanted to add, so one of the things that, you know, guy mentioned is he wants to make calls, right? So that's, that's one of the things that his agent would do. So in, depending on what, you know, everyone's line of business is making calls, is.
Much very [00:28:00] important, right? Um, but you have to think about what is your, what is your time worth? Uh, is being on a phone call, um, important? Absolutely. It's something that needs to get done, right? Because you need to try to reach out to prospects and things of that nature. But does it require your expertise?
Absolutely not. Um, so you, is your time more valuable than between 12 to $15 an hour? Of course it is, right? So your time can be used, um, elsewhere. And so where, what it does require your expertise. So that's one of the reasons why it was a basically no-brainer for guy. Um, and Jim also to go ahead and bring on, um, take my tasks as, um, as a thing.
Alan Armijo: Yeah, no, I, there's a lot of value there. Um, okay.
Guy Shurki: Well, I think, I think the other thing is to know what you're good at and what you're not. To admit, to admit it in a way, I'm, I'm not just, I'm not good in [00:29:00] cold calling. Um, and I'm not good in, uh, you know, I'm just not good in, in doing those sales, uh, at the initial contact.
So just offload it. Let someone that knows what he is doing to do what they need to do and what they know how to do, and then move on and do what you're good at.
Alan Armijo: Okay. So Guy, let's stick, let's go to you. What are you good at?
Guy Shurki: We're good in cybersecurity and it, so you're, we we're good in messaging network and securing them.
We've been doing it for a little bit more than two decades. We have, uh, four, four techs working in LA and Orange County, and, uh, we basically either work with the existing IT department and help them in what I call the higher level things that they need more like a CIO position. Or we take over the IT for the company and we manage everything from A to Z [00:30:00] for those companies, which A is basically laying down the infrastructures and the cable and the wifi and everything else.
And Z is, you know, doing the cybersecurity, the backup, the network administration for them, the purchasing of the computers and, and everything in between, uh, that, that the company need. You know, we've been doing it again for, for two decades and, uh, we have client, orange County, LA County, and now a lot of things are shifting into the cybersecurity.
Uh, I'm, I'm shifting my, my attention into the cybersecurity for our clients. While my team is working on the day-to-day operation, when it comes to, you know, network administration, troubleshooting, upgrading, and, I, in October, I mean Windows 10 is gone. The, the, the support for Windows 10, uh, 10 is, is gone.
So we have a lot of computers that need to be upgraded [00:31:00] to Windows 11 by that time. So anyone that has Windows 10, just, just make sure that you guys upgrading to Windows 11 as soon as possible.
Alan Armijo: Okay. Thanks Guy. Guy has a very, uh, good podcast we did with him, uh, B2B Synergy where he explains a lot of his services and, shares his knowledge in different areas.
Okay. Good. Good. All right. Thank you. Uh, Canice. Thank you guy. Let's go to Jim. Better. Jim, how are you doing?
Jim Better: Swell.
Jim Better
Jim Better: Swell. Swell. Just, just a, a quick point here when, Valerie was on, you know, I get a sense, some optimism in the market, and then Jack comes on and he reinforce that, and then Johnny comes on.
Johnny comes on. I think maybe what on mute, Johnny, when he starts heading south on his comments,
we, we don't need any, reality checks here right now, Johnny. We just need to feel good about things.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: I apologize. I have, I'm the one that's always ex uh, expecting the worst, so I'm never disappointed.[00:32:00]
Jim Better
Jim Better: I'm gonna take you off my speed dial, if you don't mind.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Hey man. But I'm the guy that, uh, will always say, uh, uh, don't worry. I got you. I already, I was already prepared for this worst case scenario. I got you. Let's build you back up.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Well, well, Jim, like, do you have any solutions on how to avoid aging? You know, so keep, could you, how, how do that a, don't talk to Johnny.
How, how do you, how do uh, avoiding aging a positive?
Jim Better
Jim Better: Well, you, you eat a lot of In-N-Out burger. Enjoy yourself, drink, burger. Um, stay up late, get up early, don't get enough rest. Um, there's a lot of things, a way to avoid aging because you know you'll be happy, healthy, and dead on the same day in your early sixties.
Johnny Garcia: Wow. So you're telling me I have a free, a bad outlook. Wow.
Alan Armijo: Tell let's, let's, let's, we're solving a problem
Jim Better: here, Johnny.
Alan Armijo: Let's educate. Let's educate Jose on what you do, Jim. [00:33:00]
Jim Better: Okay. The, you all may have heard that we, legislation recently passed and our president signed a, big bad bill, a big, beautiful bill.
That's, gonna have a real impact in the, the field where I work, which is in long-term care funding. Um, and how that's work is, in simple terms right now, if, you need some, uh, long-term care, which means you have, you have a, uh, a caregiver come into your house or you go to assisted living or nursing home or whatever the, wherever the care setting happens to be, the ratio of nurse to patient.
Right now for people who rely on Medi-Cal is one to 10. So that means one nurse is gonna take care of 10 people, whether it's at home services or assisted living, wherever it may be. Um, if you're a, a, self-pay client, a self-pay patient, um, where you know [00:34:00] you've got enough money or you've got, an insurance policy, the ratio for those facilities in those cares is one to six.
All right? So, you don't need to be real good at math to figure out that you're gonna get better service if you're able to self-pay. So this big bad, a big beautiful bill, what that's done to Medicare, Medi-Cal and Medicaid, is it is gonna change the dynamic. Um, and you heard it here first, that the ratio for, um, patient to patients to caregiver is likely to go one to 12 or one to 14.
And I'm thinking, okay, I think the happy, healthy and dead is the best way to go here. 'cause then you can avoid the insurance premiums and you can avoid sloppy long-term care as well. Um, but that, that, that's what the, and I didn't make this prediction. This is coming from some people who really know what they're talking about.
Uh, but I can see where this is, where it's going for, uh, the healthcare, the long-term care and [00:35:00] uh, market for people. Um, add onto that, the fact that, um, some, uh, the state of Washington, uh, a couple years ago passed a. Tax, a payroll tax where every W2 is kicking in 5.6% of their income into a pool to pay some of their long-term care expenses.
Uh, it's not very much, but, um, the, the legislatures, every state knows that more than half of the people when they need it are gonna go on Medi-Cal or, and it's kept Medi-Cal and this day is Medicaid everywhere else. Um, so the legislature is getting really freak out about this, and it has been there, like that's the last 25 years where you can see the aging population.
You may have heard of the baby boomers. Okay. Yes sir. Yeah. There's 10,000 a day turning 65. Mm-hmm. Um, and half of those people when they need it, they're gonna end up on Medi-Cal. Um, and so. Uh, [00:36:00] Washington State has already done something about it. California, um, will probably be the next state to do something about it, and it's likely gonna come down to be a payroll tax to cover the, uh, at least a basic amount of longterm care.
But like what Washington State did, if you have, if you're a self-pay client, that is, if you've got an insurance policy that says, okay, I'm gonna be able to pay for my own long-term care expenses, you wanted to pay the tax. And, um, that's what the, what the conversations have been with the legislature and when it comes around to them actually doing something about it, that's likely to be the um, uh, the way it comes out.
Um, now that said, the state of California had a task force that met for four years and 35 meetings, and they came up with a recommendation, um, that's now sitting, waiting for the legislature to pick it up. And the south worker, it would've come out last year, but, um, we had, uh. Uh, floods. And this year [00:37:00] we had a fire, and the last year was a leg, was an election year so that no legislator was going to recommend a bill that raised taxes during an election year.
This year would've become a bill. However you may inferred, we had a big fire up end of Los Angeles, so that's slowed things down as well, but it's eventually gonna become a, uh, a topic of conversation within the legislature. It'll become a bill, and then eventually some kind of law. So I'm, I'm following Johnny's lead here.
I'm gonna give a down report about everything that's going on.
Alan Armijo: Well, Jim, everyone, what I wanna do is, um, have another podcast interview with you just about your hybrid policies and how the cost of your policies and the benefits they give. Okay? So just a very succinct podcast related to that they can hear.
You're, you're our first podcast, um, person and, you know, long-term care. Is very, comprehensive as uh, Jim was starting to tell us everything about it. [00:38:00] Okay. Do that so
Guy Shurki
Guy Shurki: we know. So the bottom line, when you turn 65, you need to move down to Mexico and get yourself some nanny to take care of you. That's the bottom line.
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: I'll take all your stuff out there for you. There you
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: go. No problem. So, okay, so we have, um, let's go to, uh, Kelly. Kelly. How are you doing?
Kelly Haws
Kelly Haws: Perfect timing. I was just writing a goodbye message 'cause I had to jump off in a few minutes. Okay. Goodness. Things are good. Um, we're seeing a lot of, like logistics and transportation companies are, are still hiring, a lot of staff right now. It is a candidate's market at this moment, so, um, it seems that there are, um, with the inflation, everything that's going on, candidates are less likely to leave their current companies, um, unless you have a really great offer, um, in front of them.
So, uh, I think it's, candidates, you know, if they can get the [00:39:00] opportunity, and especially if they're in a niche market, um, definitely have the upper hand in any hiring at this time, but we're seeing a big uptick in, logistics, transportation, and a lot of fabrication right now. When
Alan Armijo: you say transportation, what do
Kelly Haws: any sort of transportation, air, ground, ocean shipping, so any sort of, uh, transportation of goods being moved from one location to
Alan Armijo: another, like, like logistics coordinators and stuff like that.
Kelly Haws: Yeah. Uh, and sales people. We're seeing a lot of, dispatchers, yeah, a lot, a lot of, operational people within logistics as well.
Alan Armijo: Okay. Do you do anything with drivers?
Kelly Haws: We can do drivers and forklift drivers on a direct hire fee. We don't have, just because it's such a higher, um, risk, um, management as far as workers' comp, um, fees are concerned. We can't hold them on our payroll, but, we can find [00:40:00] people that are direct hire. Um, and that just depends on what our agreed terms are for that.
Alan Armijo: Okay. Good. Good to know. Um, any questions for Kelly?
Okay. Well, um, Kelly, we'll, hopefully soon do your podcast. Um, we'll, we'll set it for October maybe. Um, and then the last person we have today before we get to Johnny Johnny's announcement is, um, as a reminder, our meetings go to 1215, so we get a chance to get everybody in. Um, but, it's, it's almost 12 right now, so we have a little more time.
Miguel, how are you doing? Let's go to Miguel Bravo from Coer Bank.
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: Hi folks. So we're doing good. Uh, overall the banking industry is experiencing, uh, like a period of, digital transformation, and right now it's competition, so that competition specifically in the, deposit growth, um, category. So, um, right now you've probably received a [00:41:00] lot of notifications from your bank or other banks.
They're vying for deposits here at Cric. Actually, we just introduced two new, CD offers, one being a 60 day CD at 4.25 a PY. And another new one that they offered now is a 90 day fixed, CD for 4.15. So a lot of competition from all these other banks are kind of forcing other banks to, you know, offer more flexible, uh, CD products.
Uh, 'cause there's a lot of people just, you know, want flexibility. They're not really wanting to commit to a longer term. So hence this is why it's driving other banks to offer a specifically Comerica as well. 60 day CDs and 90 day CDs. So, overall good. Uh, deposit, uh, banking industry is pretty good. Loan growth is a little modest right now, but we're still lending.
Uh, but overall I can say that it's a trending in the right direction so far.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: I have CDs with you, they're great. And the other question is, did Beatrice sign on with you? [00:42:00]
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: Yes, beat HS did. I can't provide too many details due to, you know, uh, pr uh, privacy. But, uh, she did and met with beat HS worked out nice lady.
Um, and we were able to make some things work for her as well.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Mm-hmm. Good, good. Um, thank you. Minimum on those CDs, Miguel,
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: uh, 2,500 is the minimum for the CDs and they go up to 10 million. Just on fyi, for those of you that have 10 million max, you're maxed out 10 million.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Hey, a 4.5 return, uh, percent return in 90 days or not really
Alan Armijo: divided by three.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Do you think that four 2.5 is going to be around for a while?
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: Um, for the foreseeable future? I think it'll be around, up until pro, I want to say mid August, late August for sure. Um, uh, you know, this was pretty sudden. This was a surprise for us as well because we were only offering. Uh, uh, either six months, nine months, or 12 months.
So again, competition right now amongst all the banks vying for the deposit growth and deposits [00:43:00] is triggering these changes. So, I mean, they, they probably could even be better, uh, at the end of August, but I think they'll be around for a good, uh, for the next month or so.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Yeah. 'cause in my case it would, the, the, the interest rate would go up from where it is now
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: possibly.
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Okay. Good. Um, all right, so, um, any questions for Miguel Coer Bank? Uh, Jose, you need a banker? Business banker? He is great.
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: I just, uh, yeah, I mean, maybe down the line. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You know, learning a little bit more about it. I just, I had a meeting yesterday with, uh, with Chase.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: That's right. Um, the thing about ER is, versus the, uh, you know, kind of like those bigger. B of A's and Chases is that, you know, you, you have somebody like Miguel who is, knows about everybody's businesses and he can give referrals to you. He kind of, in other words, he knows your business in order to refer you.
[00:44:00] If, uh, that's the one thing that you wanna look at when you're banking with somebody, is do they really know what you're doing? And are they gonna be the person that's gonna be there the next time? You know, you go in. So, um, uh, highly recommend Comerica.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: They're on
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: the traffic circle.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: No, but are you guys incorporated?
Because that would be the first thing I do is get incorporated.
Yeah. L uh, like a LLC.
Johnny Garcia: Yeah.
You're incorporated, right? Yeah. Yes, sir.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're already, they got that taken care of. Yeah. So, um, yeah, these, these guys, um, seem to be doing, making all the right moves as they're getting going.
[00:00:00]
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Thank you. Okay, good. So let's start out with, our members speak, since we have a guest, let me just start with, Jose Valdez from, SoCal Junk Brothers.
You, and is it you and your brother that have a business you started? Yes, sir. It's me and my brother. Okay. Why don't you introduce you yourself and what you guys are doing.
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: Yes, sir. So I have a little, speech that I, that I have right here. So I'm Jose Valdez. I'm the president and co-founder of SoCal Junk Bros.
Removal, LLC. We're based out of Long Beach, California, and it's, me and my little brother. We decided to build this business to bring professional, reliable, reliable touch to junk and demolition debris across Southern California. We specialize in clean outs, for property managers, contractors, real estate professionals.
We handle everything from evictions and remodel debris to move out and post demo scrap. Our crew is fast and we're bilingual, so that that helps us out with a lot of the Spanish, clients. We like to [00:01:00] show up, on time and profess professional. We're growing our business organically. So we don't have any paid lead services that we go with.
We are reaching out personally to build real relationships, just to be more dependable, easy to work with. We love, we love to be your go-to crew. We wanna explore how we can help, operations run more smoother. So, whether it's a last minute job, urgent clean outs we're, we're always willing to work with, with anyone.
Alan Armijo: Right. Great. Any questions for Jose?
Valerie Condon
Valerie Condon: Jose, do you also do, landscape and debris?
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: Yes.
Valerie Condon
Valerie Condon: Excellent.
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: Yes ma'am. That'll be, so we have, we have a, we have a 10, a eight by 10 by four foot trailer. It, it does have a hydraulic dump, so we'd be in and out quick, really, really fast. We have our own, we, we carry our own tools, so clean [00:02:00] up.
We, we won't leave a mask at your house or anything like that. So that's also
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: like construction sites, is that, is that right? Yes, sir. Okay. And, and private homes you said too, right? Yes, sir. Mm-hmm. Okay. We're, I, I, I'm making, cold calls, on behalf of Power Partners trying to, find new Power Partners.
And, I called Jose. We had a nice conversation. Turns out, we might be doing some help with him on marketing with his business cards and the decals on your truck. Just a quick question. The decal you want, is that gonna be like a one you want to glue on? Like to paste on?
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: Yeah. Like a vinyl, yeah, like a vinyl sticker. Just put it on.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Okay. No, just, just checking. Okay. So,
Jose Valdez: Any other
Alan Armijo: questions for Jose?
Candace Ramirez
Candace Ramirez: No question specifically, but it's crazy how Alan, I just wanna give a little bit of an insight how, Jose came in and he explained what it is that he does, and right away my [00:03:00] brain is working so many different things.
I'm like, oh, he can probably work with Vince because Vince's company does. Mm-hmm. This and that and like, so it's great Vince, so Vince, he's not here today, unfortunately, but he is another power partner. And so it's like the connections that Power Partner makes is like you showing up to these meetings.
It automatically brings, our core people into consideration. 'cause you're telling me what you do. This is the first I've ever heard of your business, your line of work. And I'm like. Oh, wait, let so I think it's really great when you bring, someone new in that has a complete different field or line of work and that, it's easily like, oh, they can work with so and so and things like that.
So I just wanna bring that up. 'cause I think that, you know, that's the first thing that popped in my head.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Right, right. And I've already sent him a couple of, introductions or just at least names, just so he get a feel for how we do work when, I'm using Johnny's AI to make those introductions as well, Candace.
So thank you. That is true. But nothing [00:04:00] actually beats these meetings, frankly, I think. Mm-hmm. The top, way to really connect with people is, through the meetings where I can hear 'em talk and then going into our in person, if you didn't hear before Jack and, kelly, we scheduled it for August 7th, our in-person, member round table for, being able to discuss problems and solutions that we have in our business.
So it's not a networking event, it's not a happy hour. It's, a work session from 10 30 to noon. Tentatively at Keller Williams on second, and PCH and with lunch afterwards, we'll go to a restaurant nearby. So, okay. Well, thank you Jose. Thank you for attending. I'll be available to answer any questions about Power Partners and, let's go on to Deborah or Mijo, IRU Marketing.
Thank you guys for having Yes. Stick around. Stick around. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Deborah, what's the latest with Irus?
Debra Armijo
Debra Armijo: Well, hello. Hi, Jose. Debra. Hi Debra. From Irus Marketing, helping businesses with their visual communication, whether it's. [00:05:00] Online or offline, meaning, you know, print, brochures, tablecloths, you know, hopefully helping work, hopefully look forward to maybe helping Jose with his Oh yeah,
definitely.
Debra Armijo: Yeah, so, and then even like, working with, Johnny with, ai, that's been real interesting. And, and plus what's ironic is, working with a client together, we still have to promote the AI visually. So we're putting information on their website to remind them to use this new tool.
It's just ongoing updating things. Then also we're working with, Arlene with, option One Home Care. We updated, she already has her logo and website and all that, but she's had some outdated information on her brochure, so we updated that. Got it printed. It was funny 'cause our old brochure didn't, it didn't have, it didn't even have her website on it.
So things like that. We put QRS to get to information, but also helping [00:06:00] her, we were at one of her meetings where we were handing it out for her and meeting doctors and nurses and hopefully do more like that. Maybe some expos or conferences with her help help her set up her, her visual, marketing with banners and things like that.
Tablecloth. But yeah. And then finally, well, I don't know. I, it's a never ending updating our Power Partners brochure, so, I think we finally have it done, but we may have to wait again. But what I do, what I do, yeah, we'll have it done by
Alan Armijo: the seventh. We'll have it done by the seventh.
Debra Armijo: Well, we have to have it done by the seventh, but, it.
If somebody, if people join afterwards, we do, I have it really big on the brochure to look for updates, got QR codes to go to the new me, the members listings. So I'm always kind of thinking ahead. 'cause that's, but it's really nice to hand out something tangible. I have to tell you it works.
So, but yeah, if, [00:07:00] you can see our work on, I trusts marketing.biz, you can see their websites or logos or print material, social media on, online, images. So, there you go.
Alan Armijo: Good. Good. Any questions for Debra?
Okay, thank you Debra. Very comprehensive for us. I wanted to go to Jeffrey since we haven't seen you in a while, Jeffrey. How are things at the office? Condos,
Jim Better
Jim Better: you're renting them out.
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: We're actually selling 'em. This is the Costa Mesa project. Alan's referring to 200 East Baker. It was, office condo conversion we started over two years ago.
And it's going well. We've sold two, at full asking. We have one in escrow and, expecting another signed purchase and sale agreement today. So that will sell out about half the building, which puts us in a, a really good position, for the remainder of the project. Good for you. They're, they're coming along fantastically [00:08:00]
Valerie Condon
Valerie Condon: question, who are you, who are you selling to?
What businesses?
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: Professional services. So one was, wealth management. One is a technology group, an attorney. Attorneys are really loving the project just 'cause it's super high end office space. The group we're in escrow with is actually a real estate, development company. Small firm, but they do some pretty good projects just looking for, you know, professional office space.
Valerie Condon: And how, what are the range and sizes of these spaces from?
Jeffrey Hakim: The smallest one is about 2300 square feet and the largest is 12,000 square feet.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Thank you. How many floors is that?
Jeffrey Hakim: Two floors.
Johnny Garcia: And you said that they're conduits, so I'm curious because this is commercial, right?
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: Yes.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: That's, I'm curious about that.
It, does that mean like it's a co-op? 'cause it's not an HOA, I mean
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: there is an association. Yeah. So it's just like you would think of a residential [00:09:00] condo, right? This is just a, commercial real estate office condo. So there 10 units in this two story office building. They all have an individual, a PN, you know, every owner can take title however they choose.
So just, you know, full standard rights of voting, of real estate. But because there is common area, there is an association in place that accounts for, manages the common area, internal and exterior, landscaping, all that good stuff for the property
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia (2): insurance and all that. Does it include any, like utilities or any other,
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: the association?
Yes. There's the, all the units are separately metered for electricity. Everything else is included in the, the association. So basically a buyer will have their mortgage, their property taxes will be the primary expenses, their premises insurance, right, for just insuring everything within the walls and then their electricity.
Hmm.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Someone was [00:10:00] asking me about commercial space and I didn't even know that this was an option.
Jeffrey Hakim: I'm driving right
Jim Better: now.
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: Yeah, it's fairly unique, we're seeing it a little more often. We're seeing it with medical office as well. I'm actually seeing it with some industrial product as well. The, what I like about this project is the majority of the units are two to 5,000 square feet, which in office space, that's the majority of the requirement.
It's probably 80% of the demand in the market, but they don't build buildings that small. You really don't find anything under maybe 5,000, but most likely 10,000. So we're, we're, it's a, I mean it's a drop in the bucket as far as the supply goes, but we're, we're catering to what could be a pretty large, demand.
'cause again, that's the majority, that size range is the majority of the market, but there's just. Not a lot for sale in that size range.
Johnny Garcia: Yeah. When I was, when I was doing a lot of the real estate, I had a couple, a couple of commercial people come up to me and the two biggest concerns were of course, availability.
'cause there was nothing out [00:11:00] there that they need or that fit their needs. Mm-hmm. Or if it did feed their needs, it was too much. And, and buying the land as well, put them over the price limit. So I didn't even know, buying a, a condo, a piece of a property, like this was an option and I'm like, damn, I wish I would've known about this a couple years ago.
Jeffrey Hakim: Yeah, me too.
Johnny Garcia: Yeah.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: So, so, Jeff, Kelly, Haws is, she changed her companies and she's more on the lines of, placements and contacts in the warehousing area, right, Kelly?
Kelly Haws
Kelly Haws: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jeff and I have actually, we've met before.
Alan Armijo: Okay, good. Thank So we already have
Kelly Haws: coffee. Yeah. So we're aligned.
Kelly Haws
Kelly Haws: We are good to go.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Alright. Just, I'm glad you're selling.
Kelly Haws
Kelly Haws: That's awesome to hear, Jeff.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Thank you. Okay. One of those
Johnny Garcia (2): for me, Jeff.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: I plan on making a lot
Johnny Garcia (2): of money soon.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: I love it. I wanna hear, love to see you in one of those things. The last rising tide
Jeffrey Hakim
Jeffrey Hakim: lifts all ships. Let's do it.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Last thing, Jeff. If you get the opportunity to have a, you know, a Power Partners mixer at your space, let us know.
You know, now that you, [00:12:00] now that you're getting more, set up over there, we'll, we'll bring people to you. My pleasure. We'll bring people to you. Okay. Let's, absolutely. Let's go to Valerie. Valerie, welcome back to Power Partners. Thank you for rejoining. We we're, I know you were a member. We have you a member since 2023, but you were a member well before that.
You had to, took a break and came back and now, you know, but we, we love having you as a great resources, great resource, as well as a friend. And, thank you for the leads that you've been giving us. Those are always nice to, get. What else? Why don't you tell us what's the latest?
Valerie Condon: So, I am a veteran real estate agent.
I've been selling real estate in the, LA County, orange County area for a very long time. Residential, is a majority of my business, but I do some small commercial, small office buildings, various locations. The real estate market is shifting. We talk about that all the time in my industry, but we are seeing the shift [00:13:00] inventory is up 30%.
Price reductions are in the 40% range. Norm is somewhere lower than 30. Interest rates are remaining in the high sixes to seven. We don't see any shift there at all. So it is becoming something we have not seen in decades, maybe a normal market, where, you know, we don't have 10 offers. We don't have property selling 50 or a hundred thousand dollars.
Every list price we see them sell for list price are slightly under. We're seeing more concessions from sellers in terms of paying closing costs or other, concessions for buyers. A shift going on Meanwhile. Property continues to appreciate, you know, LA Orange County. There's nowhere else to build.
And consequently we're gonna see things like, I, I expect we'll see these condo conversions in it. Business condo conversions, existing sites, because there's just nowhere to [00:14:00] build and people keep coming to California. Our economy continues to be extraordinarily robust. So overall, some.
Shifts, but the market remains very, very strong. Please feel free to use me as a resource. As I said, I've been in the business for a long time. If there's nobody in our group in terms of a, a vendor, I have people, real estate attorneys, trust attorneys, any attorney you might divorce attorneys, any attorney you might want.
I can certainly provide a referral as well as contractors, handyman, you name it. They're all vetted. I personally use the vast majority of them. Either they have worked for me or I've seen their work in one of my clients' homes. So please use me as a resource. If I don't have the answer or I can't provide someone, I'll find someone for you.
Alan Armijo: Yeah. And, well, any questions for valor? Because, Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Johnny Garcia: Yeah. So are, are, are you a broker or an agent?
Valerie Condon: I'm an agent. [00:15:00] Why, tell me, why would I wanna be a broker and have that additional liability?
Johnny Garcia: Only reason I ask 'cause I'm a broker and I'm like, you don't want to be one. So, yes. You know why they're
Valerie Condon: called brokers, right, Johnny?
'cause they're broke.
Johnny Garcia: You're absolutely right about the whole liability. Now the only reason I'm asking was because of the platform. I'm gonna show you guys in a minute. I'm like, I'd have to talk to your broker to see. I just think there's a lot of synergy there. And moreover, I wish I would've known you again two years ago before I became a broker and all this stuff.
'cause with your experience, it would've been great to have some sort of mentor rather than stumbling through the chaos that I've gone through in the last few years.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Well, this, this is why we're gonna have this, this member round table is to, get this resource, connections going, you know.
We all want leads. We always, we all want referrals, but we don't miss out on saving money or making money from information that we can get from each other. Let's stay on the real, I'll go Do you want something, Jim?
Jim Better
Jim Better: Yeah, I [00:16:00] wanna, Valerie, it sounds like things have flipped pretty quickly here in the last couple months.
They
Valerie Condon: really have Jimmy. Absolutely. And I wanna
Jim Better: say, I wanna give Jackinsky a a a a heads up here because he predicted this. Yeah. How's going Jack?
Alan Armijo: Well, I, I wanted to go to Jack to keep it on the real estate front and just kind of mention, I don't know if this is a canary in a coal mine, but a friend of mine's a realtor in the Hamptons in New York, and like I see his emails
Johnny Garcia
Alan Armijo: and like, prices are reduced by $200,000.
You know, and I don't know if that's going on here where price reductions in housing is, is a thing yet, but, I just, I, I just thought a surprise to see like that big a drop. But I think it's relative to, you know, when you're talking the Hamptons. But, yeah. Jack, what, what's the latest? Thank you for your emails.
Those are very good information, that you're sending out. And you're on the mute. You're on mute. You're on mute, Jack.[00:17:00]
We can't lip read.
Jack Senske: So, yeah, you're welcome. I, it, it's, it's a weird market. It all started and, and I visit real estate, agents all the time. You know, it's the bulk of my referral business. And so I'm out actually on the street in offices talking to people. And it's funny that everything seemed to have happened right around the,
Alan Armijo: oh, no.
Oh, oh no. Oh, talk about go to commercial. You, you froze up, Jack. Wait,
Jack Senske: wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You felt like that was done on purpose, man. I was like, you had, you had everybody at the edge of their seats. So anyway, I, I, I'm not sure what just happened there, but, I, anyway, so it all kind of happened and, and that, and I, I kind of,
equate this to like a slack tide. It's, it's kind of in between one tide coming in and the other one [00:18:00] going out. And so there's a lot of stagnation. I think, people are waiting. I think, Valerie may agree with this, but I think there's a ton of pent up demand and people are just, we're waiting. They're waiting, they're waiting for some impetus to kind of go forward.
I think, the uncertainty kind of is kind of stall stalling it and that, and that's creating a little bit of a, a lack of demand. And I think probably the biggest impetus that will make things go forward will be some positive move with the interest rates. And, and once we get there, once we get some feeling that it's gonna go and continue to go rather than going and stop and back up again, I, I think that that'll probably change the tide to go back out.
But it'll be. Probably more of a buyer's market. There's gonna be, I think more sellers than buyers. And I think it'll kind of even out. We never are even, it's always one way or the other. It's, unfortunately, it's never predictable one, you know, with, [00:19:00] an even buyer seller market. So, anyway, I'm, I'm just looking forward to our, our demand.
I'm sorry about my printer. It's going nuts. I'm just looking for that point where we tip and, and start going the other way with the interest rates. And I think the real estate market will stabilize then. So it's good. We have inventory. It's good. We have appreciation. I think it's good that we have a lot of buyers that are ready to buy.
I just, we're just looking for the trigger.
Alan Armijo: Right. What do, what do you, you froze when you said, what do you think started it?
Jack Senske: I think it all started basically when the, the whole thing in my mind, it started right when this tariff business started at the beginning of April. Mm-hmm. The stock market went sideways.
People's retirement accounts went down, the buyers got uncertain. Do I really want to jump in? I don't know what's gonna happen. And we kind of got stuck there. I, and from all of my agents that I talked to, stuff is sitting on the market crazy. Stuff is sitting on the market that didn't sit on the market 30 days [00:20:00] before.
So it's really, really weird. As Valerie explained, the shift is just crazy. But, again, it's just a dynamic that I think as fickle as it is, it's just gonna take a little bit of a trigger. Hopefully it's the interest rates that kind of set things back. Moving again, 'cause it's dead.
Johnny Garcia: I'll let Jim go, but I got a statement on that too.
Jim Better: Go ahead, Jim. Okay. Where's Jose? Jose, you can get rid of anything. You can, you can move anything, any way you can get my ex-wife outta my life. Oh, that one we'll do for free. Oh, ouch. That's a
Johnny Garcia: deal. Hey Jim, there's a dark web I can introduce you to hold on a dark web. Jack, to your point. So, I mean, I think most of you know my background is in the mortgage and analytics and whatnot, and I still do small contracts for friends here and there.
And I, one of the research that we were doing was exactly that. Like we're trying to predict what the next, what the fed's gonna do over the next, you [00:21:00] know, two to three, quarters. And, you know, we were signed, we were seeing some, some saw some improvement prior to this election. And we thought, okay, cool.
We thought there was gonna be a boom and rates would come down. But you're right, the terrorists unfortunately. Artificially is keeping inflation high, which is forcing the Fed to keep rates high. We may, we think they may even raise them, if, if the, this administration says they're gonna do what they're gonna do with the tariffs.
But to your point, the craziness of all of this is that you have rates that are high appreciation that's still going up. And if you actually look at the, household debt and the money supply and on, if you guys dunno what Fred is, is the Federal Reserve economic data source.
It's my go-to place to go. They have a thing in there that shows you how much money people have in their savings account as a whole country and as well as debt. All the money people had saved up during COV seems to now being, [00:22:00] seems to be being tapped into now 'cause we're no longer seeing that crazy line up and debt is through the freaking roof.
So the craz, so I don't even know, even if unless interest rates come down, even the people who are working and want to buy that new house, I don't know if they're gonna qualify with their, with, with their, with their DTI, 'cause their debt is so high. Even before I stopped doing mortgages, and I stopped doing mortgages last year, some of my clients were coming in and they were telling me, yeah, I have 150,000 in cash that I saved during COVID.
Why? Because they, they stopped paying their mortgage payment 'cause they weren't gonna be foreclosed on. And they were, their wife was on unemployment, but they were getting COVID really, she was making more money on unemployment than she was in, in, in her job. So they were able to accumulate a lot of cash, but to hold onto that cash, they started using their credit cards for everything.
The credit card payments were so much smaller. So now when they were trying to come back two years later saying, oh, I wanna buy that [00:23:00] house now, which is 20% higher than it was two years or four years ago. I'm like, you don't qualify. They go, what are you talking about? I have 150,000 in cash. And I'm like, yeah, but you've added $40,000 of debt on your credit card with that mortgage payment at these prices.
Your DTI is over 50%. I can't qualify you un unless we go non qm. And even then you don't qualify. So we're trying to figure out what the next. Wave is gonna look like. But I think to Valerie's point, we're gonna start seeing a lot of more concessions. You're gonna need to, I mean, these people are not gonna be able to afford it otherwise.
And values are gonna start coming down. And if the administration does move forward with a lot of these tariff talks, it's possible we're gonna start seeing a recession. And if we see a recession, that could trigger a lot of other things too. So, anyway, that's just my 2 cents that came up and I, I had to throw it in there.
Alan Armijo: Yeah. Let me, welcome and this is, you know, things that we can bring up too and you know, how to deal as members with [00:24:00] recession, possibilities and stuff. We're gonna talk about this. Miguel, welcome. We scheduled our, member. Round table for August 7th from 10 30 to noon. And then we're gonna have lunch afterwards.
It's gonna be at, most likely at Keller Williams right now. So that's, that's the plan. It's an in-person thing. So that's our relationship building opportunity and, problem solution. Meeting, let's go to, uh, Candace. You have a couple of announcements, right? Candace, at least one.
Candace Ramirez: Yes, yes. Um, so just a little bit of a overview, um, here at Take My Tasks, uh, formerly known as Daftco, which is still our parent company.
Um, we provide, um, virtual customized virtual assistance services. Um, basically anything we need from lead generation, appointment setting, calendar management, executive assistants, personal assistants. Um, and the list literally goes on. Bookkeeping, project management, picture video editing, everything. Um, when I say [00:25:00] customize, we basically, um, you know, go off of your business wants and needs.
Um, so there's that. Um, we do try to keep our pricing as low as possible, um, at around 12 to $15 an hour, give or take. Um, and you get qualified candidates, so if you use specific CRMs or specific tools, they would be, um, all the candidates provided to you would be experienced in those tools, uh, to minimize your, um, training time.
And, uh, an announcement, I guess that guy and I can share together is, um, we just partnered yesterday. Um, so we have officially started recruitment for him, uh, today.
Guy Shurki: I'm good. Yeah. I, I, we, we had a call yesterday. Am I on mute or No? You're, you're okay? No, we can hear you. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry again, I'm in the car.
Uh, yeah, we, we had a, a great meeting yesterday. [00:26:00] Thank you very much, Candace. And, um. She looked at which, um, which CRM we going to use. Um, she recommended some. We, you know, I, I took that, uh, one of her recommendations. And then, uh, the good thing is that the person she's going to find us is going to know that CRM and is going to know the marketing platform that we going to use.
So I don't need to waste my days and weeks just trying to teach someone how to use stuff. Uh, I can just, uh, unleash them, you know, on the CRM and the marketing tool and, uh, let them do their work and I can concentrate on other things. That's what I like about it. And the price is excellent. I mean, like $15 an hour, you know, four hours a day.
I mean, that's, that's an excellent price.
Alan Armijo: What's the goal? Which knows what
Guy Shurki: he's doing.
Alan Armijo: What's the goal with your, uh, the virtual basically. [00:27:00]
Guy Shurki: Basically cold calling companies, mining, uh, mining the, the Apollo io and, uh, and finding qualified clients so they can schedule me into a meeting with the clients and then I can just, you know, we can grow the company.
'cause until now, for two decades, more than two decades, I've been growing organically from one client to another, to another. And now we wanna do this one big jump in, in growth. And for that I need someone to be on the phone and to make phone calls. Um, I never tried it before, gonna be the first time, so we'll see how that's worked.
Alan Armijo: So good. So Candace, um, anything else you wanna add or any questions for Candace?
Candace Ramirez: Um, well, I just wanted to add, so one of the things that, you know, guy mentioned is he wants to make calls, right? So that's, that's one of the things that his agent would do. So in, depending on what, you know, everyone's line of business is making calls, is.
Much very [00:28:00] important, right? Um, but you have to think about what is your, what is your time worth? Uh, is being on a phone call, um, important? Absolutely. It's something that needs to get done, right? Because you need to try to reach out to prospects and things of that nature. But does it require your expertise?
Absolutely not. Um, so you, is your time more valuable than between 12 to $15 an hour? Of course it is, right? So your time can be used, um, elsewhere. And so where, what it does require your expertise. So that's one of the reasons why it was a basically no-brainer for guy. Um, and Jim also to go ahead and bring on, um, take my tasks as, um, as a thing.
Alan Armijo: Yeah, no, I, there's a lot of value there. Um, okay.
Guy Shurki: Well, I think, I think the other thing is to know what you're good at and what you're not. To admit, to admit it in a way, I'm, I'm not just, I'm not good in [00:29:00] cold calling. Um, and I'm not good in, uh, you know, I'm just not good in, in doing those sales, uh, at the initial contact.
So just offload it. Let someone that knows what he is doing to do what they need to do and what they know how to do, and then move on and do what you're good at.
Alan Armijo: Okay. So Guy, let's stick, let's go to you. What are you good at?
Guy Shurki: We're good in cybersecurity and it, so you're, we we're good in messaging network and securing them.
We've been doing it for a little bit more than two decades. We have, uh, four, four techs working in LA and Orange County, and, uh, we basically either work with the existing IT department and help them in what I call the higher level things that they need more like a CIO position. Or we take over the IT for the company and we manage everything from A to Z [00:30:00] for those companies, which A is basically laying down the infrastructures and the cable and the wifi and everything else.
And Z is, you know, doing the cybersecurity, the backup, the network administration for them, the purchasing of the computers and, and everything in between, uh, that, that the company need. You know, we've been doing it again for, for two decades and, uh, we have client, orange County, LA County, and now a lot of things are shifting into the cybersecurity.
Uh, I'm, I'm shifting my, my attention into the cybersecurity for our clients. While my team is working on the day-to-day operation, when it comes to, you know, network administration, troubleshooting, upgrading, and, I, in October, I mean Windows 10 is gone. The, the, the support for Windows 10, uh, 10 is, is gone.
So we have a lot of computers that need to be upgraded [00:31:00] to Windows 11 by that time. So anyone that has Windows 10, just, just make sure that you guys upgrading to Windows 11 as soon as possible.
Alan Armijo: Okay. Thanks Guy. Guy has a very, uh, good podcast we did with him, uh, B2B Synergy where he explains a lot of his services and, shares his knowledge in different areas.
Okay. Good. Good. All right. Thank you. Uh, Canice. Thank you guy. Let's go to Jim. Better. Jim, how are you doing?
Jim Better: Swell.
Jim Better
Jim Better: Swell. Swell. Just, just a, a quick point here when, Valerie was on, you know, I get a sense, some optimism in the market, and then Jack comes on and he reinforce that, and then Johnny comes on.
Johnny comes on. I think maybe what on mute, Johnny, when he starts heading south on his comments,
we, we don't need any, reality checks here right now, Johnny. We just need to feel good about things.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: I apologize. I have, I'm the one that's always ex uh, expecting the worst, so I'm never disappointed.[00:32:00]
Jim Better
Jim Better: I'm gonna take you off my speed dial, if you don't mind.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Hey man. But I'm the guy that, uh, will always say, uh, uh, don't worry. I got you. I already, I was already prepared for this worst case scenario. I got you. Let's build you back up.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Well, well, Jim, like, do you have any solutions on how to avoid aging? You know, so keep, could you, how, how do that a, don't talk to Johnny.
How, how do you, how do uh, avoiding aging a positive?
Jim Better
Jim Better: Well, you, you eat a lot of In-N-Out burger. Enjoy yourself, drink, burger. Um, stay up late, get up early, don't get enough rest. Um, there's a lot of things, a way to avoid aging because you know you'll be happy, healthy, and dead on the same day in your early sixties.
Johnny Garcia: Wow. So you're telling me I have a free, a bad outlook. Wow.
Alan Armijo: Tell let's, let's, let's, we're solving a problem
Jim Better: here, Johnny.
Alan Armijo: Let's educate. Let's educate Jose on what you do, Jim. [00:33:00]
Jim Better: Okay. The, you all may have heard that we, legislation recently passed and our president signed a, big bad bill, a big, beautiful bill.
That's, gonna have a real impact in the, the field where I work, which is in long-term care funding. Um, and how that's work is, in simple terms right now, if, you need some, uh, long-term care, which means you have, you have a, uh, a caregiver come into your house or you go to assisted living or nursing home or whatever the, wherever the care setting happens to be, the ratio of nurse to patient.
Right now for people who rely on Medi-Cal is one to 10. So that means one nurse is gonna take care of 10 people, whether it's at home services or assisted living, wherever it may be. Um, if you're a, a, self-pay client, a self-pay patient, um, where you know [00:34:00] you've got enough money or you've got, an insurance policy, the ratio for those facilities in those cares is one to six.
All right? So, you don't need to be real good at math to figure out that you're gonna get better service if you're able to self-pay. So this big bad, a big beautiful bill, what that's done to Medicare, Medi-Cal and Medicaid, is it is gonna change the dynamic. Um, and you heard it here first, that the ratio for, um, patient to patients to caregiver is likely to go one to 12 or one to 14.
And I'm thinking, okay, I think the happy, healthy and dead is the best way to go here. 'cause then you can avoid the insurance premiums and you can avoid sloppy long-term care as well. Um, but that, that, that's what the, and I didn't make this prediction. This is coming from some people who really know what they're talking about.
Uh, but I can see where this is, where it's going for, uh, the healthcare, the long-term care and [00:35:00] uh, market for people. Um, add onto that, the fact that, um, some, uh, the state of Washington, uh, a couple years ago passed a. Tax, a payroll tax where every W2 is kicking in 5.6% of their income into a pool to pay some of their long-term care expenses.
Uh, it's not very much, but, um, the, the legislatures, every state knows that more than half of the people when they need it are gonna go on Medi-Cal or, and it's kept Medi-Cal and this day is Medicaid everywhere else. Um, so the legislature is getting really freak out about this, and it has been there, like that's the last 25 years where you can see the aging population.
You may have heard of the baby boomers. Okay. Yes sir. Yeah. There's 10,000 a day turning 65. Mm-hmm. Um, and half of those people when they need it, they're gonna end up on Medi-Cal. Um, and so. Uh, [00:36:00] Washington State has already done something about it. California, um, will probably be the next state to do something about it, and it's likely gonna come down to be a payroll tax to cover the, uh, at least a basic amount of longterm care.
But like what Washington State did, if you have, if you're a self-pay client, that is, if you've got an insurance policy that says, okay, I'm gonna be able to pay for my own long-term care expenses, you wanted to pay the tax. And, um, that's what the, what the conversations have been with the legislature and when it comes around to them actually doing something about it, that's likely to be the um, uh, the way it comes out.
Um, now that said, the state of California had a task force that met for four years and 35 meetings, and they came up with a recommendation, um, that's now sitting, waiting for the legislature to pick it up. And the south worker, it would've come out last year, but, um, we had, uh. Uh, floods. And this year [00:37:00] we had a fire, and the last year was a leg, was an election year so that no legislator was going to recommend a bill that raised taxes during an election year.
This year would've become a bill. However you may inferred, we had a big fire up end of Los Angeles, so that's slowed things down as well, but it's eventually gonna become a, uh, a topic of conversation within the legislature. It'll become a bill, and then eventually some kind of law. So I'm, I'm following Johnny's lead here.
I'm gonna give a down report about everything that's going on.
Alan Armijo: Well, Jim, everyone, what I wanna do is, um, have another podcast interview with you just about your hybrid policies and how the cost of your policies and the benefits they give. Okay? So just a very succinct podcast related to that they can hear.
You're, you're our first podcast, um, person and, you know, long-term care. Is very, comprehensive as uh, Jim was starting to tell us everything about it. [00:38:00] Okay. Do that so
Guy Shurki
Guy Shurki: we know. So the bottom line, when you turn 65, you need to move down to Mexico and get yourself some nanny to take care of you. That's the bottom line.
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: I'll take all your stuff out there for you. There you
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: go. No problem. So, okay, so we have, um, let's go to, uh, Kelly. Kelly. How are you doing?
Kelly Haws
Kelly Haws: Perfect timing. I was just writing a goodbye message 'cause I had to jump off in a few minutes. Okay. Goodness. Things are good. Um, we're seeing a lot of, like logistics and transportation companies are, are still hiring, a lot of staff right now. It is a candidate's market at this moment, so, um, it seems that there are, um, with the inflation, everything that's going on, candidates are less likely to leave their current companies, um, unless you have a really great offer, um, in front of them.
So, uh, I think it's, candidates, you know, if they can get the [00:39:00] opportunity, and especially if they're in a niche market, um, definitely have the upper hand in any hiring at this time, but we're seeing a big uptick in, logistics, transportation, and a lot of fabrication right now. When
Alan Armijo: you say transportation, what do
Kelly Haws: any sort of transportation, air, ground, ocean shipping, so any sort of, uh, transportation of goods being moved from one location to
Alan Armijo: another, like, like logistics coordinators and stuff like that.
Kelly Haws: Yeah. Uh, and sales people. We're seeing a lot of, dispatchers, yeah, a lot, a lot of, operational people within logistics as well.
Alan Armijo: Okay. Do you do anything with drivers?
Kelly Haws: We can do drivers and forklift drivers on a direct hire fee. We don't have, just because it's such a higher, um, risk, um, management as far as workers' comp, um, fees are concerned. We can't hold them on our payroll, but, we can find [00:40:00] people that are direct hire. Um, and that just depends on what our agreed terms are for that.
Alan Armijo: Okay. Good. Good to know. Um, any questions for Kelly?
Okay. Well, um, Kelly, we'll, hopefully soon do your podcast. Um, we'll, we'll set it for October maybe. Um, and then the last person we have today before we get to Johnny Johnny's announcement is, um, as a reminder, our meetings go to 1215, so we get a chance to get everybody in. Um, but, it's, it's almost 12 right now, so we have a little more time.
Miguel, how are you doing? Let's go to Miguel Bravo from Coer Bank.
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: Hi folks. So we're doing good. Uh, overall the banking industry is experiencing, uh, like a period of, digital transformation, and right now it's competition, so that competition specifically in the, deposit growth, um, category. So, um, right now you've probably received a [00:41:00] lot of notifications from your bank or other banks.
They're vying for deposits here at Cric. Actually, we just introduced two new, CD offers, one being a 60 day CD at 4.25 a PY. And another new one that they offered now is a 90 day fixed, CD for 4.15. So a lot of competition from all these other banks are kind of forcing other banks to, you know, offer more flexible, uh, CD products.
Uh, 'cause there's a lot of people just, you know, want flexibility. They're not really wanting to commit to a longer term. So hence this is why it's driving other banks to offer a specifically Comerica as well. 60 day CDs and 90 day CDs. So, overall good. Uh, deposit, uh, banking industry is pretty good. Loan growth is a little modest right now, but we're still lending.
Uh, but overall I can say that it's a trending in the right direction so far.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: I have CDs with you, they're great. And the other question is, did Beatrice sign on with you? [00:42:00]
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: Yes, beat HS did. I can't provide too many details due to, you know, uh, pr uh, privacy. But, uh, she did and met with beat HS worked out nice lady.
Um, and we were able to make some things work for her as well.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Mm-hmm. Good, good. Um, thank you. Minimum on those CDs, Miguel,
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: uh, 2,500 is the minimum for the CDs and they go up to 10 million. Just on fyi, for those of you that have 10 million max, you're maxed out 10 million.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: Hey, a 4.5 return, uh, percent return in 90 days or not really
Alan Armijo: divided by three.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Do you think that four 2.5 is going to be around for a while?
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: Um, for the foreseeable future? I think it'll be around, up until pro, I want to say mid August, late August for sure. Um, uh, you know, this was pretty sudden. This was a surprise for us as well because we were only offering. Uh, uh, either six months, nine months, or 12 months.
So again, competition right now amongst all the banks vying for the deposit growth and deposits [00:43:00] is triggering these changes. So, I mean, they, they probably could even be better, uh, at the end of August, but I think they'll be around for a good, uh, for the next month or so.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Yeah. 'cause in my case it would, the, the, the interest rate would go up from where it is now
Miguel Bravo
Miguel Bravo: possibly.
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Okay. Good. Um, all right, so, um, any questions for Miguel Coer Bank? Uh, Jose, you need a banker? Business banker? He is great.
Jose Valdez
Jose Valdez: I just, uh, yeah, I mean, maybe down the line. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You know, learning a little bit more about it. I just, I had a meeting yesterday with, uh, with Chase.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: That's right. Um, the thing about ER is, versus the, uh, you know, kind of like those bigger. B of A's and Chases is that, you know, you, you have somebody like Miguel who is, knows about everybody's businesses and he can give referrals to you. He kind of, in other words, he knows your business in order to refer you.
[00:44:00] If, uh, that's the one thing that you wanna look at when you're banking with somebody, is do they really know what you're doing? And are they gonna be the person that's gonna be there the next time? You know, you go in. So, um, uh, highly recommend Comerica.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: They're on
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: the traffic circle.
Johnny Garcia
Johnny Garcia: No, but are you guys incorporated?
Because that would be the first thing I do is get incorporated.
Yeah. L uh, like a LLC.
Johnny Garcia: Yeah.
You're incorporated, right? Yeah. Yes, sir.
Alan Armijo
Alan Armijo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're already, they got that taken care of. Yeah. So, um, yeah, these, these guys, um, seem to be doing, making all the right moves as they're getting going.